NYT dumps a copyright snowfall on startup referencing its work

"If you wouldn’t mind using another publication to advertise your infringement tool..."

Last year The New York Times unleashed its vision of digitally native storytelling with "Snow Fall." The piece broke away from standard newsprint-transplanted-to-Web design, offering interactive graphics, videos, and other multimedia integrated into an overall narrative. It wasn't necessarily earth-shattering, but it demonstrated a cool concept for others to aspire to.

The push to move beyond common content templates is precisely what drives the tiny startup Scroll Kit. According to a blog post by founder Cody Brown, the company works "to help publishers break from their templates and craft powerful digital stories" by streamlining this process. So Brown saw "Snow Fall" as an opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of Scroll Kit. "Instead of tweeting about how awesome 'Snow Fall' was," he said, "I wanted to do something that would show its admirers that they can do it too—I made a replica. It took about an hour to put together, and I recorded a video of the process."

Nice homage, right? Not quite. According to the cease-and-desist letter Brown later received from NYT, the video is actually a nice example of copyright infringement. NYT requested that Brown remove the demo from YouTube, the Scroll Kit site, and other social media avenues within three days. Despite considering the video acceptable under fair use, Brown didn't want to fight the NYT legal team and he complied (setting the video to private).

Brown notified the paper of his actions and, to his surprise, he received another letter. NYT didn't deem his actions acceptable. Furthermore, they now wanted all mentions of "The New York Times" removed from the Scroll Kit website. On its front page, Scroll Kit says that "[t]he NYT spent hundreds of hours hand-coding 'Snow Fall'" before touting its streamlining.

As of this writing, Scroll Kit's site is still making its claim citing the NYT. Brown responded to the last letter from the Times by e-mailing the identified lawyer for more information about why Scroll Kit was infringing. He received a third and final letter from a different member of the NYT legal team, one that's too good not to include in full:

Dear Mr. Brown:

We are offended by the fact that you are promoting your tool, as a way to quickly replicate copyright-protected content owned by The New York Times Company. It also seems strange to me that you would defend your right to boast about how quickly you were able to commit copyright infringement:

The NYT spent hundreds of hours hand-coding “Snow Fall.” We made a replica in an hour.

If you wouldn’t mind using another publication to advertise your infringement tool, we’d appreciate it.

As techdirt noted, there was a strong fair use argument to be made with the initial letter. With the second letter, it's odd for NYT to request that a factual statement be removed just because it references the paper. The wordings in this third letter—"infringement tool"—are an entirely different (and condescending) matter. But this isn't the first time The New York Times has flexed its legal muscles in an unclear instance. Just last year, the paper approached the Twitter parody account @NYTOnIt for how the handle used the infamous "T" from its signature font.